


Halves To The Whole

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Sharing a Body, it's roomy in there I suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 16:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15368514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: A cautionary tale on why you shouldn't play with things that don't belong to you which doesn't turn out very cautionary.





	Halves To The Whole

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for silverfire13 on tumblr, the second place winner of my 1500 Followers Giveaway.

Long hair and associated vanity aside, Madara was pretty sure that his brother was the more feminine between the two of them. Hearing his own voice reach octaves which shouldn’t have been possible after puberty did its work was enough to make him question that surety – or it would have if he weren’t currently batting for control over his own body. Fingers groped at his flesh in odd places and Madara scrambled to stop them before they could go anywhere interesting. They were his own fingers, damn it, it shouldn’t be this hard!

“Not there!” he wheezed, clamping one of his hands around the wrist of the other.

“What the fuck is happening!?” It was weird having someone else speak through his own vocal chords, feeling the movement and hearing the sounds but knowing that he himself did not speak a word. Madara’s brain derailed briefly to question how she managed to make him sound different.

“Just calm down,” he snarled back. “We can’t figure out what happened if we’re panicking.”

“I don’t want to be a boy!”

Madara rolled his eyes then yelped when his own fingers pinched his side in retaliation. “What the hell! You’re only pinching yourself too, you know!”

His companion didn’t answer but he could feel her seething somewhere inside him, which was pretty much the opposite of any experience he had ever imagined between the two of them. If he had a choice he would have preferred to feel himself inside of her rather than the other way around, although he still wouldn’t have wanted it to happen quite this way. Clearly Sakura agreed with that last point.

“Didn’t I warn you that sneaking around Tobirama’s labs wasn’t a good idea?” Together they wobbled toward the table, both of them trying to guide the legs of their shared body and sending all sorts of confusing signals to the muscles. Madara sighed. “But _noooo_ you can’t control your curiosity can you? You’re as bad as my cats!”

“Alright! There’s no use complaining about it. We’ll just have to ask Tobirama how the hell to reverse, uh, whatever this is.” Her words faltered and it was enough for him to interject with scornful pique.

“What if I don’t want to go begging to that bleached asshole?”

They paused and he could feel the gears of her thoughts turning, control of their body shifting entirely over to him for a few blessed moments as she hesitated before speaking again. “Sometimes you say things and I wonder if you know that it means two things. Do you know what a bleached asshole _is_?”

His response was little more than a growl at first as she began to instinctively struggle for control again and nearly sent their body toppling backwards. Neither of them spoke for a little while after that. Getting out the door and down the path took much longer than it should have and his frustration was only increased by the fact that he couldn’t truly be mad at her for that. She couldn’t help the fact that her brain was trying to tell her current legs to walk at the same time that his was. Two minds in the same body were bound to create a bit of disparity, whether they meant to or not.

Eventually they made it close enough to the main house to wobble over to the fence, hold on for dear life, and holler for Hashirama. Who was not actually home at the moment, as they discovered after a short battle for control over his sensing abilities.

“Fuck.”

“You watch your language, young lady.”

“Excuse me but right now I’m a young man and you can shove my language where the sun don’t shine.” Sakura paused. “After I get out of your body, though. Don’t shove anything anywhere until I get the hell out of here.”

“I hate every single thing about this,” he grumbled.

Wrenching control over to herself for a moment, Sakura sent them both slumping down to the ground and propped them up against the closest fence post. “Yeah, yeah. Me too. Look, I didn’t get stuck a hundred years before I was even born just to also get stuck in your body so don’t whine at me like you’re the one getting the short end of the stick here. I never wanted a penis. Now I’ve got one. So cool your jets and let’s just wait here to see if help comes, alright?”

Madara stewed wordlessly for a moment, knowing she could feel his irritation. Eventually the curiosity overwhelmed him and he just had to ask.

“What are jets?”

“ _That’s_ what you got out of that? Ugh!”

“You didn’t answer me,” he pointed out. She groaned again. It sounded much harsher coming out of his throat than it would have coming from hers and he didn’t like it.

Sakura tended to make delicate sounds which belied the terrible destruction she was able to wreak upon the world around her. From one moment to the next she could switch from laughter as sweet as birdsong to bringing an entire building crashing down with the flick of a single finger. Madara sort of hated how intriguing he found it. She’d never made a secret of how wary she felt around him, even now several years after she found herself stuck in the past – a revelation that still struck him every so often.

Gaining this woman’s trust had taken more effort and energy than building a whole village had and he still wasn’t sure if he had succeeded entirely, which made it incredibly hard to decide how to interact with her. If he was even a little bit surer of his standing in her eyes he might have had the courage to ask her to dinner. As it was, he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t immediately put her fist through his chest just for suggesting it.

Waiting for Hashirama to come home was an exercise in excruciating boredom interrupted with brief periods of bickering. Sakura could be just as sassy as his younger cousin Hikaku but at least she looked cute doing it, not to mention that she never went for the low blow unless she was actually mad at you. Madara shamelessly took advantage of her touchy nature to start a few fights as they sat there on the ground. It was better than staring off in to space doing nothing, in his opinion, and although he would never admit to it he did rather enjoy their little spats. They quite often provided opportunities for him to admire her quick mind.

Nothing like a good argument and rapid fire insults to show off a bit of creativity.

He knew he was pushing his luck when he felt his teeth begin to grind together but luckily that was when Hashirama finally wandered up the street, humming to himself and swinging his arms in exaggerated motions. He very nearly walked right passed them towards the front of the house but stopped when Madara and Sakura both tried to call out to him at the same time – which, of course, meant they accomplished nothing more than gargling loudly in his direction.

“Madara? What are you doing sitting on the ground over there? Did Mito kick you out again?” He made his way over and stopped to look down at the man on the ground strangely when he began to snicker, followed immediately by a scowl directed at nothing.

“Shut up! Stop laughing!”

“Uhm…I didn’t?”

“Not you. Where is that infernal brother of yours? I have a…situation.”

Hashirama tilted his head to one side curiously. “What kind of situation would have you sitting on the ground in my backyard? That you need my brother’s help with?”

“I–“

“We’re stick together!”

“Shut up I was going to tell him!”

“Well there’s no point in beating around the bush.”

“I _know_ that; would you just shut up and let me _talk_?”

“Are you feeling okay?” Hashirama asked slowly, taking one careful step back. Both Madara and Sakura glared at him in the first united motion they had made so far. Madara crossed their arms petulantly.

“Yes I’m fine. But I, er, we might have, ah, touched something in Tobirama’s laboratory which did something…interesting. If I sound like I’m arguing with myself it’s only because Sakura-san also happens to be occupying my body at the moment.”

Rather than waste time gaping in surprise – he’d seen his fair share of weird things come out of Tobirama’s lab over the years after all – Hashirama nodded with a reflective hum as though this was all very reasonable. “I see, yes, that does explain. Ah, if I might ask where Sakura-san’s body is? Did you fuse together entirely?”

“No, we left my body back in the lab,” Sakura answered with Madara’s mouth. “We can barely manage to walk; carrying me around was a non-option.”

“Right. Okay, well. I suppose I should go get Tobirama. He should be able to fix you two right up!”

Madara managed to shake his fist at the retreating man’s back only because his body buddy wasn’t paying attention. “Walk faster you nincompoop!” he shouted. Hashirama laughed as he rounded the corner. “I hate him.”

“You love him.”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

His only consolation was in the fact that she didn’t fight the pout he settled on to their face. The surety in her voice was worrisome. If she was that confidant in his toleration for her then it wasn’t that big of a leap to assume she might suspect his affection as well. Very worrisome indeed.

Not wanting Tobirama to see him lolling about in the dirt without any shred of dignity, Madara scrambled to regain his feet while Sakura tried to detach her mind so that he could do as he wished. She did lose her concentration when he tried to wipe the dirt off the back of his robes and both of them contributed to the heat in his face when his hand accidentally groped his own ass.

“I didn’t mean to,” Sakura blurted.

“Well I certainly wasn’t the one who did that!” he snarled back. Of course not. Did he believe his ass was one of the finer pieces in the village? Yes. Did he feel the need to stroke it in public? No!

“Are you suggesting that I did?”

“There are only two of us in here. Or at least there better be. I don’t know if I could handle having a third person stuck in this mess as well.”

“ _You’re_ a mess,” Sakura mumbled weakly. Madara’s hand went instinctively to his hair.

He was still trying to come up with a suitably intelligent reply when the air a few feet to one side of them displaced and Tobirama stepped out of nothingness to stare at them with narrowed eyes. Madara stared back at haughtily as he could with Sakura trying to shift his features in to a smile. The results of their conflicting signals probably left his face twitching like a mad beast.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t so bad. Tobirama already thought of him as a mad beast and he’d done very little to discourage that opinion over the years.

“My, my. What have you gotten yourself in to this time, Uchiha?” How Tobirama managed to pack so much judgment in to the movement of a single eyebrow was a mystery he didn’t care to solve. Madara glared harder.

“Fuck you,” he snapped.

“Ah, that isn’t smart. If you wish for me to fix this situation then you’d best be polite, else I might decide it’s too much trouble.”

Sakura shook a clenched fist with the arm not holding on to the fence. “You wouldn’t leave me in here like that! Senju I swear I will feed you your own teeth if you don’t get me out of here _right now_!”

“Hn.” By the twitch on Tobirama’s features, it was clear he was much more cautious of Sakura’s revenge than Madara’s and he probably hadn’t expected her to be able to speak up for herself. Hashirama must not have explained the situation very well. Either that or Tobirama had heard that Madara got himself in to trouble and rushed over to gloat without waiting to hear the details. That sounded very like him.

Without saying anything else, the man turned away and motioned for them to follow along as he retreated back up the path they had wobbled their way down before, heading towards his laboratory behind the Senju main house. Madara and Sakura struggled to follow behind. Their steps were just as uneven and jerky as they had been before but it seemed like they might actually be getting the hang of this; they managed to take at least a few steps in sync without swaying dangerously. Sakura grumbled about longer legs and how she wasn’t used to being so high above the ground.

Madara took the compliment even if it wasn’t meant as one. It wasn’t very often he got to feel tall when his best friend was a bloody tree and himself barely above average.

By the time they made it in to the lab Tobirama was already seated at one of the work surfaces with a bunch of his notes spread out around him, fingers drumming along the line of his chin in arrhythmic patterns. A frown appeared on his face and Madara echoed it without thinking. Whatever Tobirama had to frown about probably wouldn’t bode well for them.

“I have good news and bad news, Sakura-san,” he said at last.

“Oi, I’m in here too!” Madara’s scowl deepened when Tobirama continued to ignore him.

“The good news is that I can reverse the merge and return your consciousness to your own body. However, the bad news is that I won’t be able to reverse the merge entirely.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sakura demanded. They propped their hands on theirs hips indignantly at the same time.

Tobirama sighed and rubbed at the crease between his brows. “It means that you should stay out of my personal areas and not play with things you don’t understand. The seal was meant to swap your bodies but it wasn’t complete yet and instead you were woven together into one. I can return you to your own body but your minds will stay linked. Forever, I’m afraid.”

“Forever!?”

“Indeed.” The man shrugged heartlessly. “The seal was experimental. I’ve no idea what precisely it did so I’ve no idea how to reverse it either.”

“Unacceptable,” Madara growled.

“Do you want your bodies back or not?” Tobirama asked him in a deceptively mild tone. Neither Madara nor Sakura answered with more than affirmative grumbles and he nodded decisively. “Then I shall get you both back to where you belong and neither of you are going to complain about it. This mess is your fault; deal with the consequences.”

The two of them subsided to wallow in their shocked disappointment.

It actually took a surprisingly short time for Tobirama to go through his notes and ink out a seal which he hoped would do the trick to send Sakura back to her own body, although neither of them were about to complain about that. Waiting was made difficult by the way they could barely stand still properly but they did their best to remain quiet until finally he lifted the scroll he was using and waved it through the air to dry the ink, peering down at the floor where still no one had bothered to move Sakura, to her annoyance.

“Hopefully this works,” he muttered.

“What do you mean hopefully?” Madara jabbed a finger at the other man. “It’s your stupid experiment, it had better work!”

“It was an _unfinished_ experiment, you boob.” Tobirama glared back at him until Sakura rolled Madara’s eyes and took control long enough to smack him upside the head with one of his own hands. He squawked irritably, although that was more because she did so right in front of Tobirama than for any sense of pain.

With much grumbling from both men they converged on the table in the center of the room. Tobirama cleared enough space to lay out the scroll and instructed them to place one of their hands in the center – easier said than done. Both of them tried to move at once without thinking and sent the hand flopping off wildly to one side. Madara snarled to just let him do it and he could feel Sakura trying but their second attempt still didn’t quite go where they wanted it to. On the third attempt he left that hand to her and took control of the other, making him look like a child flailing at the scroll with both arms, but he was pleased to note that it worked, at least.

Darkness filled their vision for a moment and Madara could only describe the sensation he was experiencing as having his insides torn out all at once. It wasn’t exactly a physical feeling and yet it left his body reeling with nausea and an instant headache, neither of which had happened when they merged together before. In a burst of distrusting suspicion, he wondered if Tobirama hadn’t taken the opportunity to do something nefarious, a thought which didn’t help him stay calm at all. Then his vision restored at last and as he crumpled to the floor he caught a glimpse of Sakura stirring in the corner, limbs twitching and eyes fluttering open.

It didn’t feel like they were separated. Her presence was still very much _right there_ inside his mind, her thoughts a murmuring in the background and her emotions muted like music playing from one room over. The only difference was in the way he could sense that he was the only person in control of his body now without having to fight against another mind.

Madara’s vision returned slowly, his eyes seeking out Sakura first and watching her rub at the side of her head while Tobirama inspected her eyes, presumably giving her a medical once-over to ensure she had suffered the transfer without any negative side effects. He could feel the nervous edge to her emotions and the way she was forcing herself to stay still. She was clearly feeling the same restlessness he was yet managed not to disturb Tobirama’s checkup until the man stood up straight and waved to indicate that she was fine. Then she slumped and Madara felt the waves of relief washing through her.

When she had been riding inside his mind as an unwanted passenger her emotions hadn’t been half as prominent. Perhaps, he theorized, it was because his body belonged to him and prioritized his reactions over her own – or perhaps their reluctant savior truly had fucked something up in his efforts to clean up their mess. There was no way of knowing which at the moment.

“Ah, you’re not dead,” Tobirama noted with disappointment shading his words. Madara scowled.

“Wish you were,” he growled.

“Hn. I’m sure you’re fine. If you want a medical examination then go find my brother.”

“Now hold on a moment!” Madara flung one hand out to grab on to the edge of a nearby table and slowly haul himself to his feet. “I could be dying of something you did for all we know and you’re not even going to take the time to check?”

Tobirama blinked at him slowly. “No. Now get out of my lab.”

The only thing that stopped him from breathing out the biggest Grand Fireball he’d ever created right there in front of many explosive materials was Sakura’s hand around his wrist, dragging him around and leading him to the door while her exasperation rang clearly in his mind. He couldn’t quite decipher the words she was thinking but even just the gist of it was enough to tell him that he was in for a hard lecture if he didn’t smarten up his act – a sentiment he resented. She was neither his wife nor his keeper so she had no right to be modulating his behavior in any way.

Only halfway between the laboratory and the Senju main house, Sakura came to an abrupt halt and spun around to face him with her cheeks turning red.

“Whatever you were just thinking about, stop it!” she demanded.

“I’ll think whatever I want!” he shouted back. Just because he could, he imagined her in a frilly little apron, standing by the stove and waiting to serve him dinner like a good ‘socially acceptable’ wife should.

“Stop it!”

“No!”

They glared at each other, fists clenched at both of their sides. Sakura looked away first when the blush on her cheeks spread out to the tips of her ears and Madara could feel the way she both shied away from and yet longed for whatever images she was seeing inside her own mind.

“Wife. What absolute nonsense! I am not your wife!”

“I never said you were,” he insisted. “But if it bothers you so much then let me think about it even more!”

Closing his eyes for a moment, he deliberately imagined the two of them holding hands and strolling down the street together, doing his best to ignore the strong pull of desire he felt for the scene to be real. He winced when a wave of shock rolled over him and he realized his companion had felt the wanting he was trying to ignore. Madara cracked one eye open cautiously, half expecting to see an angry fist coming straight for his face just for taking such liberties when his thoughts concerned her.

He found her biting her lip and staring at her toes instead, weight bouncing on the balls of her feet. Faint traces of nervous anticipation drifted across their strange connection.

“You want me…to be your wife?” she asked slowly. Madara spluttered.

“Who said I wanted–? I never–! Well obviously you’d be a good match for anyone but no one said it had to be me!”

“Hmm.” She peered up at him, demure yet thoughtful. “But you do want it,” she concluded, extrapolating from his disjointed ramblings. Madara’s face contorted and his jaw opened and closed several times while he searched for a way to answer.

In the end he slumped and crossed his arms defensively. “As I said. You would be a good match for anyone.”

“Ah-ah! Be a big boy and admit it! You like me!”

“Gloating does not become you, Sakura-san.”

“But being a perfect little wife would, huh?” She flashed him a dangerous looking grin that warned him not to agree. He already knew better than that anyway, even if he had shared such an opinion.

“Perfection is boring,” he muttered, looking away as though bored. “I much prefer a woman with a brain in her head, one who can keep up with me both in battle and otherwise. Someone who rolls over on command and waits at home to simper over a perfectly cooked meal could never satisfy me.”

The feeling of her amusement was overwhelmed only by the triumph rising like an inescapable tide. Madara was straightening his back with pride before he even realized that it was her emotion instead of his own.

“I see,” she said quietly, in direct contrast with how loud her feelings were to him.

“You – what do you see? What?”

“Lots of things. For instance, I see how you have your weight settled back on your heels the way you always do when you’re uncomfortable but trying to act all stoic instead.”

Madara wrinkled his nose in distaste for being so obvious.

“I also see the way your hands keep clenching unconsciously only to unclench when you realize it; an effort to appear casual, I’m sure.”

“You think you know everything, don’t you?”

“Well you’re not that hard to figure out,” she told him. “Besides, I still have this weird echo of you in my head and you don’t feel very upset to me; you feel nervous and worried and – dare I say it – _yearning_ but not upset” Her lips bowed upwards in a victorious smirk that was more attractive than it really had any right to be. Madara huffed, searching for any words at all that he could pull together in to a rational sentence.

“Shut up,” was all he came up with.

“Maybe I’ll shut up if you kiss me. But don’t take all day about it. We’ve already wasted enough time dancing around each other, wouldn’t you say?”

His jaw hung open in shock at her boldness and it took a few seconds before he was able to muster a response to that. Sakura waited patiently. Likely she could hear the mental static going on inside his head and understood that he wasn’t dismissing her, only startled and still trying to reboot his brain.

Finally Madara gave up on coherent words and opted for just reaching out to pull the woman in towards him, holding her as tightly as he dared as he bent the short distance between them to kiss her. It felt like being whole again. Madara didn’t bother to wonder if that was due to their odd connection or the feelings he had been hiding for well over a month now, using his dwindling brain power instead to catalogue the quiet happy sigh she made and the way her palms rested gently against his chest as though to capture the beating of his heart.

Completely sunk in to the kiss, he was jolted back out of it when he felt her sharp fingernails dig in and scratch their way down his chest suggestively. His entire body shivered under the pleasant sensation.

“Don’t start things that you do not intent to finish,” he growled warningly, pulling back to narrow his eyes at her and shivering again when he saw the way she was looking up at him, something heated and feral behind her eyes that reminded him of a cornered predator.

“Oh I very much intend to finish this,” she corrected him. “Several times before dinner, maybe again after if you’re good.”

“You are a wicked woman, did you know that?”

Sakura winked and stood up on her toes, speaking with her lips brushing against his own. “Yes, I did know that.”

He didn’t have the time to say anything else before a flare of chakra drew their attention away from each other, over to where Tobirama now stood at the top of the path with his arms crossed over his chest and a look of distaste curling his upper lip. While his face went through a few more contortions, Sakura made a point of burrowing deeper in to Madara’s arms.

“It’s not polite to interrupt such an intimate moment,” she called over. He bared his teeth.

“Perhaps you should not defile my personal property with such displays, then. Go make your poor choices somewhere that is not my backyard.”

“Excuse me?” Sakura’s lips turned down in an offended pout. “Are you saying I’m a bad choice?”

“Only that you are making one, my dear.” The two men sneered at each other with mutual distaste.

He did have a point though, as much as Madara hated to admit it. They were terribly exposed here, visible to anyone walking along the street who might peeking over at just the right angle. Besides that, Hashirama still hadn’t returned from wherever he wandered off to and Madara wasn’t willing to risk that he wouldn’t decide to come home and interrupt right when things got interesting. With that in mind he stepped away from Sakura and took her by the hand.

“My home is close and perfectly empty at the moment,” he offered. “There will be fewer irritating interruptions if we adjourn there.”

“What an excellent idea,” she purred.

Tobirama shifted and raised his chin to watch them go until Sakura turned back to look at him and call out once more in a deliberately light tone which could probably be heard several streets away.

“Later, Tobes! I’m off to ride Madara in to the mattress! Thank you for all your help!”

While her friend choked on his own tongue and cursed the both of them for that mental image, Sakura pranced away with a smile on her face. She was forced to drag Madara along as he seemed to having difficulties remembering how to work both of his legs at the same time. It looked quite similar to the jerky wobbling gait they had managed when sharing a single body. Madara tried not to imagine how much of a fool he looked like at the moment, desperately hoping Sakura meant her words despite having too much pride to actually ask.

After he was finally able to gather his wits he hurried to walk with her rather than trail after her like an eager puppy on a leash. Then he bit the inside of his cheek and looked away as the image of her holding his leash popped in to his head. He was not prepared for how much he enjoyed the thought of that.

Sakura halted in her tracks to stare at him with wide eyes.

“Whatever you are thinking of now: yes, I approve, let’s go.”

“Ah, I don’t know that I wish to share that particular thought.”

“You share it, I’ll do it.”

“Right! Shall we–?”

Now it him rushing ahead while Sakura laughed. The sound of her laughter was almost as sweet as the sensation of her genuine fond amusement bubbling up inside him. Perhaps there was a silver lining to this strange situation after all: he would never have cause to doubt his standing with her again. Being able to feel the way she reacted to him, the intensity of her emotions and the way she seemed to want this just as much as he did, was an incredible gift. How many times had he wished in the past that he could be granted a way to see inside her head for just a moment?

Softness could come later, though. The first thing he planned to do with this gift was, of course, show her just how much fire he had built up inside of him from all the time he’d spent watching and wondering. He couldn’t wait to feel her fall apart beneath him – and to hold her together for as long as she would have him.  


End file.
